‘Why are you telling me all this?’ Jane was almost shouting, running on ahead again; didn’t want to hear, didn’t want another happy family revealed as just a sham. She stumbled on a tree-root, hobbled to a standstill. ‘Let’s go back,’ she muttered. ‘The path’s all wet and muddy, and now I’ve hurt my leg.’
‘You’d better rest it for a minute. Here, sit down on this log.’ Isobel patted the rough bark, coaxed Jane down beside her. ‘I’m telling you all this, Rose, because I hoped it might be helpful.’
Jane said nothing. ‘Helpful’ seemed hardly the right word. The last thing that she wanted was more scandal, more dark secrets, more devious mothers who weren’t what they appeared. She edged away uneasily as the older woman tried to squeeze her arm, Byron nudging close the other side, all dribble and devotion.
‘Look, wait a minute, darling. You don’t quite understand. This is something rather vital which I’ve been brooding on for days, included in my prayers each night. I agonised for ages before finally deciding that perhaps it was my duty to share my story with you. I’m just sorry if I took you by surprise. I planned it all quite differently, intended to ease into the subject very sort of gradually, instead of blurting it all out like that. I suppose I was embarrassed.’ She frowned, pulled off her gloves, started chewing one cold finger. ‘I’ve never told another soul, you see, not in all these years – not even my own children.’
‘Well, there’s no need to tell me.’
‘Perhaps there is a need, Rose.’
‘What d’you mean?’
Isobel reached forward, wiped a gob of dirty froth from Byron’s lower jaw, stayed crouching down beside the dog, back still turned to Jane. ‘I had my child adopted,’ she said slowly.
Byron filled the silence – panting, frisking, charging round in circles, laying hopeful sticks at both their feet. Jane ignored both dog and sticks. ‘I see,’ she muttered coldly. ‘And that’s supposed to cheer me up?’
‘It’s supposed to show you that even loving, decent mothers who want their babies desperately can still be pressured into giving them away.’
‘You didn’t want your baby,’ Jane retorted, kicking at the log. She dared not voice the fury she was feeling: that devoutly Christian Isobel should conceive a child almost as a ruse, to avoid another problem, rebel against her parents. She pushed Byron’s slobbering mouth away, envying him his simple boisterous happiness.
‘I did, Rose. The instant she was born I knew she was the most beautiful important thing I’d …’
‘So why didn’t you hang on to her – sod the stupid pressures and stick out for what you wanted?’
‘At seventeen?’
‘So what? I’m only a year older, and I wouldn’t give my child away.’
‘It’s entirely different now, Rose. You just can’t imagine what it was like in the late fifties, and in small-town America.’
‘America?’
‘Yes. I ran off to the States as soon as I realised I was pregnant. Well, maybe ‘‘ran off’’’s the wrong word. It was all officially arranged, all above board, so to speak. I told my loving family I’d decided that I needed a bit more time and space before I settled down – maybe an au pair job abroad – and once they’d recovered from the shock, they actually helped me fix it up, though of course they’d no idea there was a much worse shock I’d totally concealed. It was really quite amazing that my father didn’t twig. I mean, there he was – a doctor – and me with bloated breasts and morning sickness …’ Isobel shook her head, incredulous, plumped back on the log. ‘Though I suppose he was just blinkered, in a way. The scandals and seductions happened to his patients, or to poor benighted working girls, not to his own chaste and cosseted daughter. Anyway, he had this friend in Wernersville, Pennsylvania, a neurologist with three young kids, who jumped at the thought of a docile English nanny who was only asking bed and board and a bit of pocket money. The trouble is, she wasn’t all that docile, and had planned to do a bunk the minute her bulge showed, simply go to ground. Unfortunately, he …’
‘Isobel, my … my leg hurts.’
‘Well, perhaps you’ve sprained your ankle. You’d better take your boot off, and let me have a look.’
‘No, it’s not as bad as that. I’d just like to go home.’
‘Home where?’
Jane paused. If she went back to the studio, the artist might appear again. With no Mrs Harville-Shaw to tether him to Sunday tea or chores, he might come round to apologise, or try to change her mind. However much she chafed at it, she was still tied to Isobel. ‘Er, back to your place, if that’s all right with you.’
‘Yes, fine. I’d like to pop some things round to Avril in the village, but that won’t take me long, and you can curl up on the sofa and watch the Sunday film.’
‘Okay.’ The rubber boots were slipping, chafing at the heel. Jane longed to kick them off, remove every single article which had come from Isobel, shed her like a skin. How could it be right to conceive a child as she had – so casually, impulsively, with the father just a cypher – or worse, a rat, a liar? Had her own father been like that, or her mother fallen pregnant just to avoid some other guy, or to spite her loving family? She picked another stick up, not for Byron this time, but to slash the tangled undergrowth, swiping at the bushes as she passed them.
‘Rose …’
‘Mm?’
‘Look, I know you’re angry with me, but …’
‘I’m not.’
‘Well, a little bit upset, then. The problem is if you refuse to let me finish, then there’s no real point or purpose in me telling you the story in the first place.’ Isobel was talking faster now, as if determined to continue, despite the fact that another group of walkers were now bearing down towards them – a family with three small boys, two muddy panting spaniels. She smiled and nodded as they passed, then resumed her flood of words. ‘I fought to keep my baby, Rose, did everything I could – ran away, lived on Seven-Up and cornflakes, took the only jobs available – washing dishes in the evening, and shampooing hair by day; finally caught a really bad infection, and landed up in a so-called Christian refuge, where they branded me a foreigner as well as a fallen woman. They made me feel a monster for condemning my own child to what they saw as a life of shame and poverty, instead of giving her the chance of two prosperous settled parents who could remove that label ‘‘bastard’’ – which to them was worse than ‘‘leper’’. In the end, I couldn’t stand the guilt, so I signed the papers, signed my child away.’ Isobel paused at last, as if marking her child’s loss with half a minute’s silence. Jane slowed to match her amble, but refused to comment, refused to say a word, just continued thwacking bushes with her stick.
‘I never found out where she went, could never get in touch with her, never even knew if she was healthy. It was as if she’d died, in one sense, though of course she was very much alive in my mind and thoughts and longings. For a while, I was absolutely obsessed with babies. Any one I saw could be my Angela. I’d called her that deliberately, to undo all the stigma, turn her into an angel. It was also Tom’s own mother’s name, and I was still in love with Tom, you see – returned to him, eventually – and married him.’
In love, thought Jane ironically. You deceive a man, dishonour him, then claim to be in love. She stopped to swat a silver birch, a ghostly-white and slender bride, hemmed in by lowering oaks – a deceitful tree whose bark was scaly-rough, its fair skin pocked and mottled, when you peered a little closer. ‘Did you ever tell him?’ she asked, frowning.
‘No.’
They both walked on, in silence; even Byron seeming chastened now, padding sluggishly behind them, instead of bounding on in front.
‘I realise that was wrong, Rose – a betrayal, if you like. I suppose I was a coward. I was frightened that I’d lose him – lose everything, in fact. And if my family found out …’ She left the sentence hanging, as if the thought of their reaction – the recrimination, horror – was too painful to be voiced. ‘They wer
e already fearfully upset that I’d left their friends in Wernersville, and in most suspicious circumstances. I had to keep on lying, even in my letters, invent absurd excuses, make up stories, reasons, fabricate addresses every time I wrote to them; pretend I’d got the travelling bug and itched to see the whole of Pennsylvania, and then the whole East Coast. I’d never lied, Rose, never, and suddenly I’d become an expert at it – a truly fallen woman, as far as my own standards were concerned. But when I finally went home, they were so relieved to see me, so delighted I was fit and well, and seemed just the same old Isobel, that I simply didn’t have the heart to churn them all up again, or let them know how much I’d changed, and I couldn’t bear the thought of hurting Tom …’
‘So you had your six pink satin bridesmaids and your notice in The Times?’
‘Eight bridesmaids, actually, in yellow-sprigged organza.’
Jane didn’t smile, just flung her stick away. ‘So your husband never really knew you – not the real you?’
‘That’s a bit extreme, Rose. I was only hiding one thing in my life.’
‘A pretty whopping thing, though.’
‘Well, I tried to justify it, decided I must start again, put all that behind me. I’d confessed to God, and confided in my vicar, who was a very holy and compassionate man, and talked about forgiveness – the sort that lets the past go, allows you a clean slate. And I vowed I’d make it up to Tom all our married life. I mean, even now, I suppose the memorial window’s like a sort of reparation.’ Jane tried to close her ears. She didn’t want the artist’s precious window ensnared in this whole sham; its theme of Resurrection twisted and distorted to fit a child who’d vanished, a child whose very birth insulted Tom. She stopped to remove the tentacles of a trailing thorny bramble, which were clutching at her sleeve.
Isobel picked a last lone blackberry, linked her arm through Jane’s.
‘Look, we’re going off the point. I only told you the whole saga so you’d understand how loved and wanted babies sometimes come to be adopted. I know you said how sad you felt that your own mother had rejected you, but maybe she was …’
‘Could we end this conversation?’ Jane interrupted rudely. She couldn’t really understand her anger. Isobel had tried to help – that was crystal clear. And it must have been an ordeal for her to rake up the whole scandal, face her pain and loss again, admit all her deficiencies to someone more or less a stranger who might rat on her, betray her, recount the sorry story to the artist, or to Rowan. Isobel had trusted her, implicitly and totally, so why was she not grateful, or even reassured?
She unlatched her arm, thrust both her hands deep into her pockets, plodded on dejectedly, trying not to think of her own mother, whom Isobel unwittingly had murdered. She simply hadn’t realised that a natural mother could be kept in such gross ignorance, never told the name or whereabouts of her child’s adoptive parents, so that child and mother were not just separated, but dead to one another. Did that still happen nowadays? She splashed fiercely through a puddle, mud spattering her boots. Secretly, naïvely, she’d been imagining wild reunions with the mother who had borne her. On the days she didn’t fear her dead (or mad, or sick, or criminal), she saw her searching frantically for her lost but longed-for daughter, about to track her down, hold her in her arms, tell her how she’d missed her, bitterly regretted having given her away. Isobel had killed that hope, destroyed that precious meeting; had also killed the myth of her own straightforward happy family – she and Tom devoted, no skeletons in cupboards, no sordid complications. Why were adults’ lives so messy – the artist shamed and bitter because he couldn’t father children; Isobel’s whole marriage built on a deception, and her own adoptive parents feeding her with lies for eighteen years?
‘Oh, look!’ said Isobel. ‘A hawk.’
Jane glanced up to where Isobel was pointing, saw a proud brown bird circling in the sky, mobbed by a black crow, who kept jostling it, attacking.
‘That beastly crow will kill it!’ Jane exclaimed.
‘No. He’s defending his own patch, trying to drive it off, that’s all.’
‘But I thought hawks were the real bullies, with vicious claws and talons.’
‘Crows are bigger, though, and they won’t stand competition.’
Jane watched the brute black body dive-bombing and harassing, listened to the hoarsely guttural cry. She turned away, couldn’t face such unreasonable aggression. Her own was bad enough.
‘Make yourself some tea while I’m at Avril’s,’ Isobel said, smoothing back a strand of Jane’s long hair. ‘And there’s fruit cake in the tin, and a new loaf in the larder. Remember what I told you, Rose, it’s your home now as much as mine, so do help yourself to anything you want.’
‘Thanks,’ said Jane, ashamed. Isobel was kind, generous to a fault, a truly loving giving mother. Yet …
She tripped and almost fell. The light was fading now, though it was only four o’clock; dusk blurring all the outlines, smoking up between the trees, like fog. The woods looked strangely threatening in the gloom: ivy choking anorexic birches, bare trunks split and splintered, damaged in the recent storm, whole limbs torn off, rotting where they lay.
‘Nearly home,’ said Isobel, fastening Byron’s leash.
‘Yes,’ lied Jane, as they crossed the road, walked the last few weary yards to Windy Hollow House.
‘I love you,’ the man whispered, his eyes intense, seductive, as he sank back on the bed.
‘I love you, too.’ The woman seemed to merge into his chest-hair, as the shot discreetly faded, replaced by pounding breakers, prurient violins.
Jane switched to ITV. Sex was so uncomplicated in those old romantic movies. Bodies simply fused – no belts, or stubborn zips, no messy contraception, no fears or guilts or hang-ups. It should have been like that when Christopher returned last night – just a sinking-fusing-merging to the strains of Paganini. It had started off that way – her lying on the bed in nothing but her bracelet, listening to his footsteps throbbing up the stairs; determined to relax this time, simply offer him her body. And, instead, she’d panicked right at the last moment, thrown her clothes on as he strode into the bedroom; somehow needed to be covered – no, not just covered, steel-clad – armoured totally against him.
All her fears had snowballed – not just fear of pregnancy, but fear of sex itself: all those gruesome articles linking it with AIDS; commercials showing coffins, programmes featuring people who had died from just one single casual fling. Yet how could she discuss it without offending him, or sounding so neurotic he wouldn’t want her anyway? He wasn’t in the mood at all for cool and quiet discussion; seemed fevered and on heat, driven by some force beyond his own control; used his voice only for cajoling, his lips for stopping hers. She had let him kiss her, let him take her top off, even felt herself responding when he’d moved his slow but urgent mouth from her throat down to her navel; flurry and excitement now curdling with the fear. Then suddenly she’d stalled; freezing, as she had before, when he tried to take her skirt off, irrationally afraid of going any further, being naked in all senses, exposed to him and open.
She reached out for the box of sweets, unwrapped a chocolate hazelnut. Was it so irrational? After all, Isobel had found herself in trouble by being too impulsive and too trusting, and her affair had been way back in the fifties, before AIDS was even heard of. She sagged back in her chair. Isobel’s confession still seemed to weigh her down – all its implications: lies again, and loss; things not what they seemed; daughter ripped from mother, wife deceiving husband.
She moved the sweet towards her mouth, left it still untasted as she crunched not the tiny hazelnut, but a sudden bitter overwhelming thought. Had that rat, that lying bastard, who’d fathered fatherless Angela been Christopher himself? It wasn’t that impossible. He and Isobel had known each other years, had been living in the same small incestuous stretch of southern England for almost half a century. And wouldn’t it explain Isobel’s interest in the artist, her strange ob
sessive mixture of resentment and attraction? It could be just his line to claim to be infertile every time he met a girl he fancied. Or perhaps he’d honestly believed it, then discovered he was wrong. Or maybe Isobel had spared him, never breathed a word about their casual mutual child. Angela Harville-Shaw. She tried the name out, substituted Jane, instead, then Rose. Rose Harville-Shaw sounded best of all; could be wife or daughter.
She fretted to the window, peered out at the drive, to see if there was any sign of Isobel returning. She must question her again, ask her more about her lover – how old he’d been, where he’d lived, how and when she’d met him. The drive was empty, save for shadows – nervous trembling shadows which looked as restless and uncertain as she felt. Isobel was playing Lady Bountiful, visiting a pensioner who was housebound with arthritis. Isobel the Good; Christopher the Bad. Labels could mislead. Yet Isobel was bountiful – genuinely warm-hearted, while Christopher was moody, churlish, impatient and offhand. And, despite her anger and resentment, she somehow loved them both; had become intimately involved with both, in just the last few hours. Both had entrusted her with their private shameful secrets; both had called her ‘darling’, which had jolted.
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